Review/Theater Deception and Betrayal In Soviet Triangle Tale

By WILBORN HAMPTON

Published: October 21, 1990

There is a surprise plot twist at the end of the first act of ''Theme and Variations,'' a play by the Soviet writer Samuil Alyoshin at the Chelsea Stage that is built solely around a faintly amusing case of mistaken identity.

This error, which goes uncorrected and undetected through much of the second act because of the lust and self-interest of the misidentified, alters the lives of all three characters in the play. Unfortunately, this unexpected turn of events comes only after a tedious introduction of the other two characters, told mostly in the exchange of a series of rather mundane letters. The story evolves out of a chance meeting between two Muscovite lawyer friends near a statue of Pushkin in Simferopol, the old Crimean city that has built a small cottage industry out of the fact that Russia's great poet once spent three weeks there on his way from St. Petersburg to somewhere else. The two men make the acquaintance of Lyuba (Kathleen McCall), a beautiful young tour guide who gives her entourage a 10-minute break to take photographs of the Pushkin statue. Dmitri (William Wise), the older lawyer, quotes Pushkin with the young woman. Igor (Ethan Phillips), the younger lawyer, tries to impress her in a more traditional way, and fails. He does, however, manage to get her home address.

Back in Moscow, Dmitri writes to the young woman, and the rest of the first act is a recitation of their correspondence. The world of letters may be the grandfather of all literature, but, with a few exceptions, it is not a literary device that transfers successfully to the stage. Mr. Alyoshin uses it in ''Theme and Variations'' for character exposition. The trouble is that the characters these epistles expose are ordinary people living commonplace lives filled with familiar problems. Lyuba turns out to be a complainer of the ''it's always something'' school. She's bored; her husband wants her to give dinner parties to help his career; her mother-in-law is always criticizing her; she gets so angry that she slams a door. Dmitri is one of those older men who are full of understanding; he is supportive; he has an aphorism for every occasion. ''Don't slam doors,'' he advises Lyuba. ''It's not the door's fault.''

The deeper problem with the play, however, is that none of this really leads anywhere, even after the inadvertent mistake in identity leads to a second-act spiral of deception, betrayal and accusation. As an illustration of the darker side of human nature and the ironies present in the process of self-discovery, ''Theme and Variations'' has all the ingredients for a good short story.

Despite energetic and animated performances, especially by Miss McCall and Mr. Phillips, neither the cast nor Geoffrey Sherman's lively direction can overcome the mediocrity and sedentary nature of so much of the material.